BOMB BLAST near my house :/

About an hour or so ago, my house rumbled, the windows rattled and cars began to wail their alarms.

A block from me a front end of a house has been blown to a crater while several surrounding houses are greatly damaged.

about 8 eight fatalities and dozen plus injuries.

The bombing has been confirmed as being caused by the Taliban

Target was on of the chief of police and his family living in the house. He was against the Fundamentalist terrorists. By sheer luck he and his family survived because they were at the back of the house.

Unfortunately six officers guarding the house perished. So did a mother and child as they were walking to school.

Apparently a pickup truck parked nearby was the vehicle used to detonate the bomb.

I'll leaving in a week and already I'm getting anxious. I live or rather lived in a secure sector of Karachi. This area is the affluent part of the city. Big houses and trendy places. It was also secure because of many high profile people living here both private and public.

There is a lot of commotion going on outside. My guards have asked me to stay inside. :/

Now this shit has happened from the other crap I've experienced. I really want to go back to Toronto now.

Damn... sorry to hear about that, crimes like that happen way too often. At least you're OK... get back safe!

OP I know you are Muslim and have shown no evidence of being a raving loon, but I've gotta post it: adherents of the religion of peace need to stop trying to act out the religion's theme song. It already has a music video!

That's awful. Hopefully you're able to stay safe and get back to Toronto alright.

I'm curious if that vehicle was marked as a possible threat. Given the neighborhood, a pick-up would be a little out of place, wouldn't it? Then again, I'm sure these things happen a lot faster than most response times. :/

The vehicle in question was fancy done pick up truck...Something which you tend to see here a lot...If you can afford to live in the affluent side, you can literally can afford to have fancy cars and suvs.

APA Taliban suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives Monday outside the home of a senior police officer tasked with cracking down on militants in Pakistan's largest city. The blast killed at least eight people and left a crater 10 feet deep, police said.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the early morning attack in the southern port city of Karachi. The target of the bombing, Chaudhry Aslam, escaped unscathed and said he would not be cowed by the attack.

"This is a cowardly act," Aslam told local television. "I'm not scared. I will not spare them."

The eight people killed included six policemen guarding Aslam's house as well as a schoolteacher and her son who were passing by, said Karachi police chief Saud Mirza. He estimated that at least 660 pounds (300 kilograms) of explosives were used in the attack.

The death toll could have been even worse if it had happened a few minutes later when many children would have been headed to schools located near Aslam's house in the Defense neighborhood of Karachi, an upscale residential area that rarely experiences militant attacks or other forms of violence that plague the city.

"Thank God it was half an hour before school time," said former Pakistani cricket team captain Moin Khan, who passed by the site of the attack shortly after the blast.

"It was horrible. I saw four bodies," said Khan. "Broken pieces of vehicles were scattered more than 100 feet."

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Local television footage showed extensive damage from the blast. The fronts of several two-story concrete buildings were totally blown away. Rubble littered the streets amid the burned wreckage of cars hit by the explosion.

Aslam is a top police officer in the Crime Investigation Department, which works to arrest Taliban fighters and other militants in Karachi, a bustling city that is home to some 18 million people and is also Pakistan's main commercial hub.

Karachi has not seen as many militant attacks as other major cities in Pakistan, but it is believed to be home to many Taliban militants who have fled army operations in the northwest near the Afghan border.

"We will continue targeting all such officers who are involved in the killing of our comrades," Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Also Monday, Pakistani intelligence officials said soldiers seized the wreckage of a suspected U.S. drone that crashed in the South Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border and was initially snatched by the Taliban.

Troops fought the militants for roughly 24 hours and eventually called in helicopter gunships to wrest control of the wreckage, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Eight militants were killed and three soldiers were wounded in the fighting, they said.

Ahsan, the Taliban spokesman, confirmed the army had seized control of the wreckage but denied any militants died in the fighting. He claimed the Taliban shot down the drone Saturday night using an anti-aircraft gun.

Intelligence officials said army engineers were inspecting the wreckage to determine the cause of the crash.

Neither the army nor the U.S. Embassy has responded to requests for comment on the crash.

The U.S. normally does not acknowledge the covert CIA-run drone program in Pakistan, but U.S. officials have said privately that the attacks have killed many high-level militants. Drone crashes have happened before in Pakistan, but they are rare.

Damn...thats scary I had to deal with terrorism in latin america in the 80s...of course it is nothing like the magnitude of where you are...but still unnerving. You are in my thoughts...let us know when you make it back.